Nigerian separatists threaten to blow up hijacked ship

Biafran separatist leader Nnamdi Kanu attending a court hearing at the federal high court in Abuja, Nigeria on January 29, 2016. Nigerian separatists have called for his release or they will blow up a merchant ship with its foreign crew in it. 

ABUJA, NIGERIA // Nigerian separatists have hijacked a merchant ship and threatened to blow it up with its foreign crew if authorities do not release a detained leader agitating for a breakaway state of Biafra, military officers said on Tuesday.

Maj Gen Rabe Abubakar, the defence ministry spokesman, confirmed the hijacking occurred on Friday and called it “an act of sabotage”. He did not name the ship.
Other officers on Tuesday said that the navy is in pursuit of the captured vessel.
The officers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the hijackers have given the government 31 days to free Nnamdi Kanu, director of banned Radio Biafra, or they will blow up the ship along with its crew.
Secret police on October 17 detained Kanu and have since accused him of terrorism, sparking protests in which police are accused of killing several demonstrators.

The ultimatum was given at the weekend by a militant identified by the nom de guerre of General Ben. He is not a separatist but “some Niger Delta militants have shown interest in working with us”, said Uchena Madu, a leader of the movement for the actualisation of a sovereign state of Biafra.

The hijacking indicates the separatists could be working with some Niger Delta oil militants blamed for recent bombings of oil pipelines in the oil-rich south, escalating conflict in a country already burdened by Boko Haram’s deadly uprising in the north-east and violent ethno-religious confrontations between farmers and herders in central Nigeria.
Africa’s biggest economy and oil producer also is battered by slashed petroleum prices.
Nigeria’s Igbo people prosecuted a civil war to create a separate state of Biafra in the south-east that killed a million people in the 1960s. Many Igbos charge they still suffer discrimination.